


and the stars, they shine

by QuietLittleVoices



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, POV Second Person, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 00:54:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1087664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuietLittleVoices/pseuds/QuietLittleVoices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's dark, and you're alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and the stars, they shine

**Author's Note:**

> Second work in the fandom, drastically different than my first. Please read and comment?

It’s dark, and you’re alone.

So much of your life can be summarised in such a small sentence, and you wish that it wasn’t that one. You wish that the most common theme in your life was something like ‘the light brought love’ or ‘his fingers danced down the ivory keys’ or something simple, yet elegant.

There’s nothing simple or elegant about the silent breakdown you have all alone every night, with only the stars to keep you company. Only the trees hear your cries, only the dirt holds you, when you wish it was him. You wish he could see you, hear you, feel you. Wish you could speak to him one last time, though you’re not sure what you’d say.

And then the cities build themselves up from the ground, outwards from stone walls of castles left to decay and ruin, only to be rebuilt for the sole purpose of letting people tour them and ‘see what it was like to live in that time’. You want to laugh at them, because so much of it is inaccurate, and you want to cry because the castle of Camelot, your home, was not one to survive the ages. Though never penetrated by an army, Camelot fell ruin to moss and weeds, rain and snow. And eventually the earth just swallowed it whole.

Sometimes you visit the castle grounds and walk around. There are still a few outcroppings of stone jutting out of the ground, and you use them as guide marks, though you think that you could still tell where any given room in the castle was. There was your room, and the physician’s quarters, and the great hall, and Arthur’s bedchambers.

And then even that was taken from you, as the green land was slowly encroached upon by cities. Their filth and smog filled the once beautiful and clear skies, and suddenly you didn’t even have the stars as your silent companion through the long, cold nights spent wanting. You’re not sure when the last one blinked out – one night, the sky was full of lights, and the next they were gone. Not getting to say goodbye was something you were quickly becoming familiar with.

Darkness was never complete anymore. The sky was a foggy grey most nights, and often during the day as well, and the lights of the city filtered into the sky further than you’d thought possible. You think he would have liked it in the city, and so you stay there, though you’d rather get a cabin in a remote fishing village where you can still see the stars and know that they’re the same one’s you’d looked at with him.

In your grubby flat, thousands of years after he left you, you paint the stars on your ceiling and you lay back and watch them.

“That’s the big dipper,” you tell him, pointing it out even though he isn’t there to hear you, and you didn’t draw it correctly in the first place.

There’s no response, but you didn’t expect one. “That’s the North Star,” you continue, pointing the brightest glob of paint on the ceiling. You don’t tell him that you think of him as your North Star; the guiding light, always leading him home. You think he knows, wherever he is. With the stars still glowing faintly above you, you close your eyes and think you can almost feel him taking up the other half of your bed, can almost feel his warmth pressed against your side. But that’s a lie.

It’s dark, and you’re alone.


End file.
